Mobile app alerts trained CPR bystanders to cardiac emergencies

A mobile app acquired by the Los Angeles County Fire Department sends alerts to smartphone users so cardiac arrest victims can receive lifesaving CPR from trainer bystanders, reports The Los Angeles Times.

The app, called PulsePoint, alerts mobile phone users at the same time as emergency crews to increase the odds that a cardiac arrest victim gets a lifesaving cardiopulmonary resuscitation. The program also provides CPR instruction and the location of the nearest defibrillators.

“Every person who knows CPR downloads this app and activates it has their own Fire Department radio in their pocket. They become the first responder," Franklin Pratt, MD, the L.A. County Fire Department's medical director, told the newspaper.

Once the heart stops beating, the chance for survival diminishes after about three or four minutes. If someone can perform immediate CPR to keep oxygen flowing to the brain, it can save lives.

Currently 13,000 people in L.A. County have downloaded the app, which links up with 650 emergency response systems. Registered users are able to travel between systems so they can respond to whatever incident is in their vicinity.

"The promise is to crowdsource good Samaritans," PulsePoint founder Richard Price, a former fire chief from the San Ramon Valley department in Northern California, told the Los Angeles Times.